For every reply you receive, the ping utility will print a line like the above. For more information see the ping(8) manual. Note that computers can be configured not to respond to ICMP echo requests. [1]

If you receive no reply, this may be related to your default gateway or your Internet Service Provider (ISP). You can run a traceroute to further diagnose the route to the host.

Note: If you receive an error like ping: icmp open socket: Operation not permitted when executing ping, try to re-install the iputils package.

Skip the next section if the driver was loaded successfully. Otherwise, you will need to know which module is needed for your particular model.

Load the module

Search in the Internet for the right module/driver for the chipset. Some common modules are 8139too for cards with a Realtek chipset, or sis900 for cards with a SiS chipset. Once you know which module to use, try to load it manually. If you get an error saying that the module was not found, it is possible that the driver is not included in Arch kernel. You may search the AUR for the module name.

The UP in <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> is what indicates the interface is up, not the later state DOWN.

Note: If your default route is through interface eth0, taking it down will also remove the route, and bringing it back up will not automatically reestablish the default route. See #Routing table for reestablishing it.

Set the hostname

A hostname is a unique name created to identify a machine on a network, configured in /etc/hostname—see hostname(5) and hostname(7) for details. The file can contain the system's domain name, if any. To set the hostname, edit/etc/hostname to include a single line with myhostname:

Some clients may however still rely on /etc/hosts, see [5][6] for examples.

To configure the hosts file, add the following line to /etc/hosts:

127.0.1.1 myhostname.localdomain myhostname

Note: The order of hostnames/aliases that follow the IP address in /etc/hosts is significant. The first string is considered the canonical hostname and may be appended with parent domains, where domain components are separated by a dot (ie. .localdomain above). All following strings on the same line are considered aliases. See hosts(5) for more info.

As a result the system resolves to both entries:

$ getent hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 myhostname.localdomain myhostname

For a system with a permanent IP address, that permanent IP address should be used instead of 127.0.1.1.

Samba provides hostname resolution via Microsoft's NetBIOS. It only requires installation of samba and enabling of the nmb.service service. Computers running Windows, macOS, or Linux with nmb running, will be able to find your machine.

Avahi provides hostname resolution via zeroconf, also known as Avahi or Bonjour. It requires slightly more complex configuration than Samba: see Avahi#Hostname resolution for details. Computers running macOS, or Linux with an Avahi daemon running, will be able to find your machine. Windows does not have a built-in Avahi client or daemon.

Tips and tricks

Change interface name

Note: When changing the naming scheme, do not forget to update all network-related configuration files and custom systemd unit files to reflect the change.

You can change the device name by defining the name manually with an udev-rule. For example:

The device path should match both the new and old device name, since the rule may be executed more than once on bootup. For example, in the second rule, "/devices/pci*/*1c.0/*/net/enp*" would be wrong since it will stop matching once the name is changed to en. Only the system-default rule will fire the second time around, causing the name to be changed back to e.g. enp1s0.

To test your rules, they can be triggered directly from userspace, e.g. with udevadm --debug test /sys/DEVPATH. Remember to first take down the interface you are trying to rename (e.g. ip link set enp1s0 down).

Note: When choosing the static names it should be avoided to use names in the format of "ethX" and "wlanX", because this may lead to race conditions between the kernel and udev during boot. Instead, it is better to use interface names that are not used by the kernel as default, e.g.: net0, net1, wifi0, wifi1. For further details please see the systemd documentation.

mtu: For PPPoE, the MTU should be no larger than 1492. You can also set MTU via systemd.netdev(5).

tx_queue_len: Small value for slower devices with a high latency like modem links and ISDN. High value is recommend for server connected over the high-speed Internet connections that perform large data transfers.

ifplugd is a daemon which will automatically configure your Ethernet device when a cable is plugged in and automatically unconfigure it if the cable is pulled. This is useful on laptops with onboard network adapters, since it will only configure the interface when a cable is really connected. Another use is when you just need to restart the network but do not want to restart the computer or do it from the shell.

By default it is configured to work for the eth0 device. This and other settings like delays can be configured in /etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.conf.

Note:netctl package includes netctl-ifplugd@.service, otherwise you can use ifplugd@.service from ifplugd package. For example, enableifplugd@eth0.service.

Bonding or LAG

IP address aliasing

IP aliasing is the process of adding more than one IP address to a network interface. With this, one node on a network can have multiple connections to a network, each serving a different purpose. Typical uses are virtual hosting of Web and FTP servers, or reorganizing servers without having to update any other machines (this is especially useful for nameservers).

Example

Packets destined for a subnet will use the primary alias by default. If the destination IP is within a subnet of a secondary alias, then the source IP is set respectively. Consider the case where there is more than one NIC, the default routes can be listed with ip route.

Promiscuous mode

Toggling promiscuous mode will make a (wireless) NIC forward all traffic it receives to the OS for further processing. This is opposite to "normal mode" where a NIC will drop frames it is not intended to receive. It is most often used for advanced network troubleshooting and packet sniffing.

Swapping computers on the cable modem

Some cable ISPs (Vidéotron for example) have the cable modem configured to recognize only one client PC, by the MAC address of its network interface. Once the cable modem has learned the MAC address of the first PC or equipment that talks to it, it will not respond to another MAC address in any way. Thus if you swap one PC for another (or for a router), the new PC (or router) will not work with the cable modem, because the new PC (or router) has a MAC address different from the old one. To reset the cable modem so that it will recognise the new PC, you must power the cable modem off and on again. Once the cable modem has rebooted and gone fully online again (indicator lights settled down), reboot the newly connected PC so that it makes a DHCP request, or manually make it request a new DHCP lease.

If this method does not work, you will need to clone the MAC address of the original machine. See also MAC address spoofing.

The TCP window scaling problem

TCP packets contain a "window" value in their headers indicating how much data the other host may send in return. This value is represented with only 16 bits, hence the window size is at most 64Kb. TCP packets are cached for a while (they have to be reordered), and as memory is (or used to be) limited, one host could easily run out of it.

Back in 1992, as more and more memory became available, RFC 1323 was written to improve the situation: Window Scaling. The "window" value, provided in all packets, will be modified by a Scale Factor defined once, at the very beginning of the connection. That 8-bit Scale Factor allows the Window to be up to 32 times higher than the initial 64Kb.

It appears that some broken routers and firewalls on the Internet are rewriting the Scale Factor to 0 which causes misunderstandings between hosts. The Linux kernel 2.6.17 introduced a new calculation scheme generating higher Scale Factors, virtually making the aftermaths of the broken routers and firewalls more visible.

The resulting connection is at best very slow or broken.

How to diagnose the problem

First of all, let us make it clear: this problem is odd. In some cases, you will not be able to use TCP connections (HTTP, FTP, ...) at all and in others, you will be able to communicate with some hosts (very few).

When you have this problem, the dmesg's output is OK, logs are clean and ip addr will report normal status... and actually everything appears normal.

If you cannot browse any website, but you can ping some random hosts, chances are great that you are experiencing this problem: ping uses ICMP and is not affected by TCP problems.

You can try to use Wireshark. You might see successful UDP and ICMP communications but unsuccessful TCP communications (only to foreign hosts).

Ways of fixing it

Bad

To fix it the bad way, you can change the tcp_rmem value, on which Scale Factor calculation is based. Although it should work for most hosts, it is not guaranteed, especially for very distant ones.

# echo "4096 87380 174760" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_rmem

Good

Simply disable Window Scaling. Since Window Scaling is a nice TCP feature, it may be uncomfortable to disable it, especially if you cannot fix the broken router. There are several ways to disable Window Scaling, and it seems that the most bulletproof way (which will work with most kernels) is to add the following line to /etc/sysctl.d/99-disable_window_scaling.conf (see also sysctl):

net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

Best

This problem is caused by broken routers/firewalls, so let us change them. Some users have reported that the broken router was their very own DSL router.

Realtek no link / WOL problem

Users with Realtek 8168 8169 8101 8111(C) based NICs (cards / and on-board) may notice a problem where the NIC seems to be disabled on boot and has no Link light. This can usually be found on a dual boot system where Windows is also installed. It seems that using the official Realtek drivers (dated anything after May 2007) under Windows is the cause. These newer drivers disable the Wake-On-LAN feature by disabling the NIC at Windows shutdown time, where it will remain disabled until the next time Windows boots. You will be able to notice if this problem is affecting you if the Link light remains off until Windows boots up; during Windows shutdown the Link light will switch off. Normal operation should be that the link light is always on as long as the system is on, even during POST. This problem will also affect other operating systems without newer drivers (eg. Live CDs). Here are a few fixes for this problem.

Enable the NIC directly in Linux

Rollback/change Windows driver

You can roll back your Windows NIC driver to the Microsoft provided one (if available), or roll back/install an official Realtek driver pre-dating May 2007 (may be on the CD that came with your hardware).

Enable WOL in Windows driver

Probably the best and the fastest fix is to change this setting in the Windows driver. This way it should be fixed system-wide and not only under Arch (eg. live CDs, other operating systems). In Windows, under Device Manager, find your Realtek network adapter and double-click it. Under the "Advanced" tab, change "Wake-on-LAN after shutdown" to "Enable".

Note: Newer Realtek Windows drivers (tested with Realtek 8111/8169 LAN Driver v5.708.1030.2008, dated 2009/01/22, available from GIGABYTE) may refer to this option slightly differently, like Shutdown Wake-On-LAN > Enable. It seems that switching it to Disable has no effect (you will notice the Link light still turns off upon Windows shutdown). One rather dirty workaround is to boot to Windows and just reset the system (perform an ungraceful restart/shutdown) thus not giving the Windows driver a chance to disable LAN. The Link light will remain on and the LAN adapter will remain accessible after POST - that is until you boot back to Windows and shut it down properly again.

Newer Realtek Linux driver

Any newer driver for these Realtek cards can be found for Linux on the realtek site (untested but believed to also solve the problem).

Realtek RTL8111/8168B

The adapter should be recognized by the r8169 module. However, with some chip revisions the connection may go off and on all the time. The alternative r8168 should be used for a reliable connection in this case. Blacklistr8169, if r8168 is not automatically loaded by udev, see Kernel modules#Automatic module handling.

The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.

Reason: "some revisions", no proof the driver is the cause, and not e.g poorly configured DNS servers (Discuss in Talk:Network configuration#)

Another fault in the drivers for some revisions of this adapter is poor IPv6 support. IPv6#Disable functionality can be helpful if you encounter issues such as hanging webpages and slow speeds.

Gigabyte Motherboard with Realtek 8111/8168/8411

With motherboards such as the Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3, booting with IOMMU off (which can be the default) will cause the network interface to be unreliable, often failing to connect or connecting but allowing no throughput. This will apply to the onboard NIC and to any other pci-NIC in the box because the IOMMU setting affects the entire network interface on the board. Enabling IOMMU and booting with the install media will throw AMD I-10/xhci page faults for a second, but then boots normally, resulting in a fully functional onboard NIC (even with the r8169 module).

When configuring the boot process for your installation, add iommu=soft as a kernel parameter to eliminate the error messages on boot and restore USB3.0 functionality.